Interview with Julian Velasco, curator of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

For Velasco, who nurtures over 350 bonsai trees at the botanic garden — one of the largest and oldest bonsai collections on public display outside Japan — it all started with a bonsai he purchased as a young man at a street fair in San Francisco.

“Pretty quickly … I knew it would be a lifelong path,” he said.

Bonsai is horticulture, art, philosophy and even a way of life in the form of a single tree, lovingly pruned and trained to exist in a small pot so that it reflects the majesty of the natural environment, he explained…..